The Director of the NRO reports to both the Director of National Intelligence and the Secretary of Defense[6] and serves as Assistant Secretary of the Air Force (Intelligence Space Technology). The NRO's federal workforce consists primarily of Air Force, CIA, NGA, NSA, and Navy personnel.[7] A 1996 bipartisan commission report described the NRO as having by far the largest budget of any intelligence agency, and "virtually no federal workforce", accomplishing most of its work through "tens of thousands" of defense contractor personnel.[8]

The National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) develops and operates space reconnaissance systems and conducts intelligence-related activities for U.S. national security.[9]

It also coordinates collection and analysis of information from airplane and satellite reconnaissance by the military services and the Central Intelligence Agency.[10] It is funded through the National Reconnaissance Program, which is part of the National Intelligence Program (formerly known as the National Foreign Intelligence Program). The agency is part of the Department of Defense.

It has been proposed that the NRO share imagery of the United States itself with the National Applications Office for domestic law enforcement.[11] The NRO operates ground stations around the world that collect and distribute intelligence gathered from reconnaissance satellites.

According to Asia Times Online, one important mission of NRO satellites is the tracking of non-US submarines on patrol or on training missions in the world's oceans and seas.[12]

The NRO was established on August 25, 1960, after management problems and insufficient progress with the USAF satellite reconnaissance program (see SAMOS and MIDAS).[14]:23[15] The formation was based on a 25 August 1960 recommendation to President Dwight D. Eisenhower during a special National Security Council meeting, and the agency was to coordinate the USAF and CIA's (and later the navy and NSA's) reconnaissance activities.[14]:46

The NRO's first photo reconnaissance satellite program was the Corona program,[16]:25–28 the existence of which was declassified February 24, 1995, and which existed from August 1960 to May 1972 (although the first test flight occurred on February 28, 1959). The Corona system used (sometimes multiple) film capsules dropped by satellites, which were recovered mid-air by military craft. The first successful recovery from space (Discoverer XIII) occurred on August 12, 1960, and the first image from space was seen six days later. The first imaging resolution was 8 meters, which was improved to 2 meters. Individual images covered, on average, an area of about 10 by 120 miles (16 by 193 km). The last Corona mission (the 145th), was launched May 25, 1972, and this mission's last images were taken May 31, 1972. From May 1962 to August 1964, the NRO conducted 12 mapping missions as part of the "Argon" system. Only seven were successful.[16]:25–28 In 1963, the NRO conducted a mapping mission using higher resolution imagery, as part of the "Lanyard" program. The Lanyard program flew one successful mission.[citation needed] NRO missions since 1972 are classified, and portions of many earlier programs remain unavailable to the public.

The first press reports on NRO started in 1971.[17] The first official acknowledgement of NRO was a Senate committee report in October 1973, which inadvertently exposed the existence of the NRO.[18] In 1985, a New York Times article revealed details on the operations of the NRO.[19] The existence of the NRO was declassified on September 18, 1992, by the Deputy Secretary of Defense, as recommended by the Director of Central Intelligence.[20]

A Washington Post article in September 1995 reported that the NRO had quietly hoarded between $1 billion and $1.7 billion in unspent funds without informing the Central Intelligence Agency, the Pentagon, or Congress. The CIA was in the midst of an inquiry into the NRO's funding because of complaints that the agency had spent $300 million of hoarded funds from its classified budget to build a new headquarters building in Chantilly, Virginia, a year earlier.

The presence of the classified new headquarters was revealed by the Federation of American Scientists who obtained unclassified copies of the blueprints filed with the building permit application. After 9/11 those blueprints were apparently classified. The reports of an NRO slush fund were true. According to former CIA general counsel Jeffrey Smith, who led the investigation: "Our inquiry revealed that the NRO had for years accumulated very substantial amounts as a 'rainy day fund.'"[22]

In 1999 the NRO embarked on a $25 billion[23] project with Boeing entitled Future Imagery Architecture to create a new generation of imaging satellites. In 2002 the project was far behind schedule and would most likely cost $2 billion to $3 billion more than planned, according to NRO records. The government pressed forward with efforts to complete the project, but after two more years, several more review panels and billions more in expenditures, the project was killed in what the Times report calls "perhaps the most spectacular and expensive failure in the 50-year history of American spy satellite projects."[24]

In what the government described as a "bizarre coincidence", the NRO was planning an exercise on September 11, 2001, involving an accidental aircraft "crash" into one of its buildings.[25] They planned to simulate the "crash" by closing off an area of doors and stairwells in the building to make employees find alternate routes out. This has been cited by 9/11 conspiracy theorists as proof of their beliefs.[26] During the attacks most of the employees at NRO headquarters were evacuated, save for "essential" personnel.[25] In charge of the exercise was CIA man John Fulton, head of the NRO's "Strategic War Gaming Division".[25] [See below.]

In January 2008, the government announced that a reconnaissance satellite operated by the NRO would make an unplanned and uncontrolled re-entry into the Earth's atmosphere in the next several months. Satellite watching hobbyists said that it was likely the USA-193, built by Lockheed Martin Corporation, which failed shortly after achieving orbit in December 2006.[27] On February 14, 2008, the Pentagon announced that rather than allowing the satellite to make an uncontrolled re-entry, it would instead be shot down by a missile fired from a Navy cruiser.[28] The intercept took place on February 21, 2008.[29]

In August 2009, The Black VaultFOIA archive obtained a copy of the NRO video, "Satellite Reconnaissance: Secret Eyes in Space." [31] The 7 minute video chronicles the early days of the NRO and many of its early programs.

At the National Space Symposium in April 2010 NRO director, General Bruce Carlson, USAF (Ret.) announced that till the end of 2011 NRO is embarking on "the most aggressive launch schedule that this organization has undertaken in the last twenty-five years. There are a number of very large and very critical reconnaissance satellites that will go into orbit in the next year to a year and a half."[32]

In 2012, a McClatchy investigation found that the NRO was possibly breaching ethical and legal boundaries by encouraging its polygraph examiners to extract personal and private information from DoD personnel during polygraph tests that were purported to be limited to counterintelligence issues.[33] Allegations of abusive polygraph practices were brought forward by former NRO polygraph examiners.[34] In 2014, an inspector generals' report concluded that NRO failed to report felony admissions of child sexual abuse to law enforcement authorities. NRO obtained these criminal admissions during polygraph testing but never forwarded the information to police. NRO's failure to act in the public interest by reporting child sexual predators was first made public in 2012 by former NRO polygraph examiners.[35]

Reports to and coordinates with the DNRO on all NRO activities and handles the daily management of the NRO with decision responsibility as delegated by the DNRO; and,

In the absence of the Director, acts on behalf of the DNRO.

Deputy Director of the NRO (DDNRO).

Senior USAF general officer. Represents those civilian/uniformed USAF personnel assigned to the NRO;

Assists both the DNRO and PDDNRO in the daily direction of the NRO; and,

Coordinates activities between the USAF and the NRO.

The Corporate Staff. Encompasses all those support functions such as legal, diversity, human resources, security/counter-intelligence, procurement, public affairs, etc. necessary for the day-to-day operation of the NRO and in support of the DNRO, PDNRO, and DDNRO.

In 2007, the NRO described itself as "(..) a hybrid organization consisting of some 3000 personnel and jointly staffed by members of the armed services, the Central Intelligence Agency and DOD civilian personnel."[1] Between the 2010 and 2012, the workforce is expected to increase by 100.[37] The majority of the workers for the NRO are private corporate contractors, with $7 billion out of the agency's $8 billion budget going to private corporations.[16]:178

NRO derives its funding both from the US intelligence budget and the military budget. In 1971, the annual budget was estimated to be around $1 billion (inflation adjusted US$ 5.8 billion in 2015).[17] A 1975 report by Congress's Commission on the Organization of the Government for the Conduct of Foreign Policy states that the NRO had "the largest budget of any intelligence agency".[19] By 1994, the annual budget had risen to $6 billion (inflation adjusted US$ 9.5 billion in 2015),[38] and for 2010 it is estimated to amount to $15 billion (inflation adjusted US$ 16.2 billion in 2015).[37] This would correspond to 19% of the overall US intelligence budget of $80 billion for FY2010.[39] For Fiscal Year 2012 the budget request for science and technology included an increase to almost 6% (about US$600 million) of the NRO budget after it had dropped to just about 3% of the overall budget in the years before.[37]

NRO's technology is likely more advanced than its civilian equivalents. In the 1980s the NRO had satellites and software that were capable of determining the exact dimensions of a tank gun.[19] In 2011 the agency donated two space telescopes to NASA. Despite being stored unused, the instruments are superior to the Hubble Space Telescope. One journalist observed, "If telescopes of this caliber are languishing on shelves, imagine what they're actually using."[41]